prize8-10, Exercise 1: Applying the six questions

Model answer (check the details), using "Keepers were driven mad by loneliness":

1. Who says it? Novelists, film-makers and storytellers; it is part of the popular image rather than a researched claim.
2. What exactly is claimed? That the isolation of the work caused madness. "Mad" could mean serious mental illness, bad temper or eccentricity, and "driven by loneliness" claims a cause.
3. What would count as evidence? Keepers' logs, the boards' records of illness and discipline, medical records, memoirs and oral histories from former keepers.
4. Compared with what? Other isolated jobs (lightships, remote stations, polar bases, shepherds) and the general population.
5. Which period? The 19th and 20th centuries, when rock stations were manned.
6. What would change my mind? A pattern of documented cases of serious illness among rock keepers well above that of other groups.

Verdict: thinly supported. Some individual cases exist, but the boards picked keepers carefully, worked in teams and rotated men between rock and shore, and the memoirs show routine and companionship as well as boredom (check). A careful sentence: "The work was lonely, and a few keepers suffered, but there is little evidence that it commonly caused madness."

Care: fiction and films repeat the image, and each repetition is not new evidence.